Mandela tells G8: It is urgent
2005-06-11 13:50
London - South African former president Nelson Mandela said on Saturday that the "need is urgent" for the world's poorest nations to be granted multilateral debt relief worth billions of dollars, as Group of Eight (G8) finance ministers neared final agreement over the issue.
"I hope you will do everything within your power to ensure that your meeting... will finally conclude in a truly historic agreement for 100% debt cancellation," Mandela said in a letter to G8 finance ministers released by the British Treasury.
"So let us not delay any longer when the need is urgent, but let us send a message of hope triumphing over despair," he added.
Britain's Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown, hosting the meeting in London ahead of next month's G8 summit in Scotland, said ministers were discussing a deal to immediately write off $40bn of debt owed by 18 countries to the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the African Development Bank.
The 18 nations comprised: Benin, Bolivia, Burkina Faso, Ethiopia, Ghana, Guyana, Honduras, Madagascar, Mali, Mauritania, Mozambique, Nicaragua, Niger, Rwanda, Senegal, Tanzania, Uganda and Zambia.
They are the first to qualify for eligibility for a debt relief joint initiative backed by the financial institutions.
The Heavily Indebted Poor Countries Initiative (HIPC) offers debt relief to the world's most impoverished nations that agree to undertake economic reform.
Up to 20 more countries could qualify for additional debt relief worth around $15bn.
G8 ministers established on Saturday the framework for a multilateral debt relief deal worth billions of dollars for the world's poorest nations, with finer details yet to be agreed, participants said.
"We are in the process of obtaining it (the deal)," a European source said.
A Canadian spokesperson added: "There seems to be a general agreement on the overall framework of an agreement. Details are subject to discussions."
Debt relief has assumed a higher profile as the world struggles to meet the UN's Millennium Development Goals calling for the proportion of the world's population living on less than a dollar a day to be halved by 2015.